Graphic: How the England squad should look

Who would take the England job? Well, I would for a start. Think about it. You get paid a fortune to work for about six weeks a year. The rest of the time you get to watch football matches, writing down your dream squad in a small notebook.

True, you get called a turnip in The Sun. But I had that happen to me anyway, without being paid all that money. The only other cloud on the England manager's horizon is that you have to settle the Steven Gerrard versus Frank Lampard question. But that's easy. Lampard. I'll send the FA my bank details.

In advance of this weekend's outbreak of World Cup fever, Dr Henry Stott, Dr Ian Graham and Dr Mark Latham have been slaving away on the stats. And there is some good news for the England manager.

By feeding six years of international match results into our computer model, it is possible to rank national sides. We last did this in December 2007 and there have been some interesting, and surprisingly sharp, changes. Unsurprisingly, Brazil remain top, but they are no longer in splendid isolation. In December, the closest side to Brazil were Argentina, who were 67 per cent as good. Now Spain are 98 per cent as good, while Argentina are 79 per cent as good. Holland are next on 73 per cent.

And England? They have risen three places up the rankings to fifth. In relation to Brazil they are now, at 68 per cent, stronger than Argentina were, although much of that has been caused by a drop in the standards of Brazil. There is a 95 per cent chance of an England win this weekend.

Using the games played so far, it is also possible to assess each country's chances of qualifying for the finals. Thirteen sides will qualify from Europe and six nations have already got a more than 80 per cent chance of being among that number. They are the Czech Republic (84 per cent), Germany (84 per cent), Spain (98 per cent), England (90 per cent), Italy (87 per cent) and Holland (97 per cent).

The other sides who are looking good are France (64 per cent), Denmark (62 per cent) and Greece (78 per cent). If all these teams make it through, which is unlikely, there would still be room for four others. And the fight for those places is very open. Note that it is a coin toss whether Portugal will make it.

Now, what about the England squad? By using every touch on the field and running last season's games over and over again on the computer, taking out players and putting in others, we are able to value the number of points added by each player compared to the average in that position.

This allows us to rank the contribution made last season and thus, allowing for injuries and exclusions (Joe Cole, Michael Carrick and Dean Ashton would have made our squad, as would Paul Scholes), to choose the best players by performance.

The first point worth noting is how much similarity there is. Depending on who you doubt more, this similarity either validates Fabio Capello's choices or shows that modelling does not defy common sense. Capello's squad is much closer to ours in terms of the points added by the players than was Steve McClaren's. A significant reason for this is because Paul Robinson, the goalkeeper, does not figure in the squad this weekend.

Michael Owen is very firmly in the Fink Tank squad but we like Matt Derbyshire, the Blackburn Rovers striker, more than Peter Crouch. But on Capello's side, using this season's performance might have led us to include Theo Walcott and Shaun Wright-Phillips.